Archives for April 2010

This was never the way she planned — not her intention. But journalist Cindy Schweich Handler wrote some fiction. And she liked it.

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a writer. And since I was an avid reader of fiction as a kid, that meant being a novelist. I was in fourth grade when I wrote the vaguely titled “Castle of Things,” a blatant rip-off of “Alice in Wonderland.” A year later, I followed this up with “Queen Elizabeth Alive,” a “Bewitch”-inspired imagining of the Tudor ruler coming forward in time to hang with a grade-schooler who happened to be a lot like me. Writing for fun was … well, a lot of fun.

As I neared college-age, though, and considered how I would eventually make a living, I decided to become a journalist. That way, I reasoned, I could consistently get paid to write, I’d experience the relatively instant gratification of seeing my work and byline in print, and I would learn about a variety of subjects while covering them. I ended up working in magazines for years and freelancing for them after starting a family, and I never regretted the decision.

That is, until years later, when I wearied of reading the final, heavily edited versions of my service pieces—those articles in women’s and parenting magazines that tell you, in strictly formatted, nearly style-free prose, how to raise a child, budget your time, or achieve any number of perennially visited objectives. Writing them paid well, and (before the market crash and digital revolution smacked the publishing industry) there was a demand for them. But I started to feel as if my writing was merely meat fed into a hamburger grinder. And it wasn’t satisfying.

It was at this point that I started hungering for a more enriching writing experience. Coincidentally, a friend who’s a successful fiction writer suggested that I attend a class for beginning novelists she was teaching in her home. With some trepidation, I took her up on her offer.

That was four years ago. Since then, I’m gratified to report, I’ve written one novel and nearly completed a second, scored a world-class agent whom I adore, and I continue to meet with my extremely supportive fellow students of fiction. (I wish I could say I’ve sold my first novel, but despite three near-misses, I haven’t. Yet.) What I’ve learned during this time, with the guidance of my excellent teacher, is that the leap from nonfiction to fiction is less about blind faith, and more about understanding what all good writing has in common. Among the observations I’ve internalized are:

What Stephen King observed in his wonderful guide, On Writing, is true: the magic of writing lies in successfully transferring a thought as it exists in your head into someone else’s. That is, when you visualize an image or scene, no matter what genre you’re writing in, you need to convey it exactly the way you see it, as economically as possible for maximum clarity.

Always keep your theme in mind. This is true whether you’re writing an essay on, say, why cell phones are evil, or a novel about a woman who discovers that her dead son was a sperm donor (my current project). Your writing is an argument, basically, and you’re trying to persuade your audience of something. With non-fiction, of course, you do your research upfront, whereas with fiction, it’s an ongoing process of discovery that takes place in the course of the writing itself. But in both instances, there’s a lot of trial and error before it’s clear what’s extraneous and what gets you closer to your goal. The longer the work, the more arduous this process will be. Which brings me to:

Trust the process. A short story might be comparable in length to a long non-fiction piece, but a commercial novel probably averages around 90,000 words. It can take so long to write that first draft that it’s easy to look at the thing, after a year or two of effort, and think, “Wow, this sucks.” Maybe it’s helpful to remember an analogy I read by an online writer. The first draft, he said, is akin to your kitchen sink after you’ve washed off the Thanksgiving dishes: After a thorough going-over, there are bits and pieces that survive, and you go on from there. Sounds harsh — but it’s not, because that realization makes it easier to continue, and the next draft will work itself out a lot faster.

Commercially, fiction is harder to sell, since fewer people read it. And in my experience, it requires more focus and attention to write, because it’s more personal. But in that respect, I find it more rewarding. And not a mysterioso, you’re-born-with-it-or-you’re-not phenomenon, but rather a process that can be learned, and savored.

Cindy Schweich Handler is a former magazine editor whose nonfiction has been published in The New York Times, Newsweek, O: The Oprah Magazine, Redbook, and many other print and online publications. She writes about politics for The Huffington Postand is currently at work on her second novel, Disaster Recovery.

Anne Burt is editor of My Father Married Your Mother: Dispatches from the Blended Family. In addition to being widely anthologized, her essays have appeared in publications including Real Simple, Salon.com, Working Mother, Parenting, and The Christian Science Monitor and on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation. Burt has appeared on The Today Show and ABC News Now to speak about step-parenting, and writes a monthly column, “Musings from the Evil Stepmother,” for Divine Caroline.com. She won Meridian literary magazine’s 2002 Editors’ Prize in Fiction and is at work on a novel Burt lives in New Jersey with her husband, daughter, and step-daughter and works at Columbia University.

Christina Baker Kline is a novelist, nonfiction writer, and editor. Her novels include The Way Life Should Be, Desire Lines, and Sweet Water. She is co-author, with Christina L. Baker, of The Conversation Begins: Mothers and Daughters Talk about Living Feminism and editor of Child of Mine: Original Essays on Becoming a Mother; Room to Grow: 22 Writers Encounter the Pleasures and Paradoxes of Raising Young Children. She is currently Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University.

Contributors

Jennifer Baumgardner is a writer, a speaker, and an activist. Her books include Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future; Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism (both co-authored with Amy Richards); and Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics. Jennifer is the editor of a series of feminist classics for Farrar, Straus & Giroux, including Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex and Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch. She is a popular pundit and interview guest—including a stint as a regular panelist on the Oxygen Network for women, as well as appearances on shows from The Oprah Winfrey Show to National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation. She lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with her son, Skuli.

Bobbi Brown is an internationally renowned make-up artist and CEO of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics. She is the author, most recently, of Living Beauty, a book that redefines beauty for women in their forties, and Bobbi Brown Beauty Evolution, a celebration of beauty across the generations. Her products are sold in more than four hundred stores and twenty countries worldwide. In addition to creating cover looks for magazines and making up models for fashion shows, Bobbi is the beauty editor of NBC’s Today Show. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and three sons.

Kristen Buckley is a screenwriter, novelist and memoirist. Her credits include How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days, 102 Dalmatians, The Parker Grey Show and Tramps Like Us. She is also the Co-Founder and Co-Editor of the popular online magazine The Grange Hall (www.thregrangehall.com). Prior to her writing career Buckley worked as a book scout for producer Scott Rudin and as a development executive for Fox 2000.

Marina Budhos has published two novels, The Professor of Light and House of Waiting, and a nonfiction book, Remix: Conversations with Immigrant Teenagers. Her short stories, articles, essays, and book reviews have appeared in publications such as The Kenyon Review, The Nation, Ms., Travel & Leisure, Time Out, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. Ms. Budhos has been a Fulbright scholar to India, has given talks throughout the United States and abroad, and is currently on the faculty of the English department at William Paterson University. Her first young adult novel, Ask Me No Questions, was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and a Notable Book. She is a recipient of a 2007 Fellowship from the New Jersey Council on the Arts.

Patricia Chao, a novelist and poet, is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, as well as the New Voice Award for Poetry. She has taught creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and New York University. Her critically acclaimed first novel, Monkey King, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers finalist. She danced mambo with the performance troupe Casa de la Salsa; her second novel, Mambo Peligroso, is set in Brazil, Japan, and Argentina.

Alice Elliott Dark is the author of the novel Think of England and two collections of short stories, In the Gloaming and Naked to the Waist. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Harper’s, among other places, and has been chosen for inclusion in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and Best American Short Stories of the Century. Her story “In the Gloaming” was made into films by HBO and Trinity Playhouse. She is a past recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

Susan Davis is the senior producer of The State of Things on North Carolina Public Radio/WUNC. Susan was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. She’s a graduate of Reed College in Portland, Oregon and has an MFA in poetry from the Writing Programs at the University of Houston, in Texas. She’s the author of a collection of poetry called Gathering Sound. Her radio career began in the early 1990s as a production assistant for National Public Radio’s Marketplace. She went on to produce and manage the documentary series Soundprint and to produce and edit All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation and the National Desk at National Public Radio. Her poems and essays have been heard on many national radio programs and in many literary journals. She is the coeditor, with Gina Hyams, of the anthology Searching for Mary Poppins: Women Write about the Intense Relationship between Mothers and Nannies. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with her husband and two children.

Louise DeSalvo, the Jenny Hunter Endowed Scholar for Creative Writing and Literature at Hunter College, has published sixteen books. Her book Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work, was named one of the most important books of the twentieth century by The Women’s Review of Books. DeSalvo has also published the memoirs Vertigo, Breathless, Adultery, and Crazy in the Kitchen: Food, Feuds, and Forgiveness in an Italian American Family, which was named a Booksense Book of the Year for 2004. Her book about the writing process, Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives, is a widely used resource for writers recovering from trauma, illness, or terrorist acts.

Bonnie Friedman is the author of the Village Voice Bestseller Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction, and Other Dilemmas in the Writer’s Life and the psychological memoir The Thief of Happiness. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times Book Review and The New York Times travel section, as well as O magazine, Redbook, Self, the Ladies’ Home Journal, Ploughshares, and the Michigan Quarterly Review. She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She teaches at New York University and at Sarah Lawrence’s Writing Institute.

Kathryn Harrison is the author of the novels Envy, The Seal Wife, The Binding Chair, Poison, Exposure, and Thicker Than Water. She has also written memoirs, The Kiss and The Mother Knot; a travel memoir, The Road to Santiago; a biography, Saint Therese of Lisieux; and a collection of personal essays, Seeking Rapture. Ms. Harrison is a frequent reviewer for The New York Times Book Review; her essays, which have been included in many anthologies, have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Vogue, O magazine, Salon, and other publications. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the novelist Colin Harrison, and their children.

Annaliese Jakimides is a writer and visual artist. Her prose and poetry have been published in many journals and magazines, including Utne, GQ, Hip Mama, Bangor Metro, and Beloit Poetry Journal, and in collections, most recently The Long Meanwhile and A Seaside Companion. Her work was broadcast as part of National Public Radio’s This I Believe series and she is the editor of the monograph series of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. A native of Dorchester, Massachusetts, after living for 27 years on 40 acres on a dirt road in northern Maine, she now lives in an apartment in the old high school in Bangor, Maine.

Dana Kinstler won the Missouri Review Editors’ Prize in Fiction in 2000; her fiction has also appeared in The Mississippi Review, guest-edited by Rick Moody. Her stories have been nominated for Scribner’s Best of the Fiction Workshops and for a Pushcart Prize, and her essays are included in the anthologies My Father Married Your Mother and Mr. Wrong. Residencies include the Vermont Studio Center and Dorset Colony House. She is currently finishing a collection of linked stories and novellas, and is also writing a novel. She lives in Tivoli, New York with her husband and two daughters.

Benilde Little is the best-selling author of the novels Good Hair, The Itch, Acting Out, and Who Does She Think She Is? A former reporter for People and senior editor at Essence, she lives in Montclair, New Jersey.

Meredith Maran is the best-selling author of nine books of nonfiction. She is also an award-winning journalist who writes for magazines such as Salon, Playboy, Self, Family Circle, More, and Health. She’s writing her first novel, A Theory of Small Earthquakes, about a bisexual with a beautiful face and a troubled soul. You can find her website at www.meredithmaran.com.

Manijeh Nasrabadi was born in 1975 in Washington, D.C., graduated from Brown University, and received an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Hunter College. She lives, writes, and teaches in New York City and travels annually to Iran. She can be contacted at manijeh_nasrabadi@yahoo.com.

Ellen Papazian is a Connecticut native who lives in New Jersey with her husband, Kenneth MacBain, and son. Her nonfiction work has appeared in Ms. and Hip Mama magazines. Her short fiction appears in the anthology The Long Meanwhile: Stories of Arrival and Departure. She holds a master’s degree in English from Rutgers University and just completed her first young adult novel. Visit her online at www.ellenpapazian.com.

Kym Ragusa, whose mother is African American and whose father is Italian American, is a Brooklyn-based writer and filmmaker. Her essays have been published in Are Italians White: The Making of Race in America and The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture. In 1999, she won a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Film, and her documentaries have been shown on PBS and in festivals throughout North America and Europe. Her first book, The Skin Between Us: A Memoir of Race, Beauty, and Belonging, was published by Norton.

Jade Sanchez-Ventura recently completed the Hunter College MFA program in creative nonfiction and lives in New York City.

Pamela Redmond Satran is the author of four novels, Suburbanistas, Younger, Babes in Captivity, and The Man I Should Have Married, and the coauthor of eight best-selling baby-naming guides, including The Baby Name Bible and Cool Names for Babies. Her newest book is 1000 Ways To Be a Slightly Better Woman, published in April 2008. A columnist for Glamour and a blogger for the Huffington Post, Satran’s essays and articles have appeared in publications ranging from The New York Times to Parenting to Publisher’s Weekly and Bon Appetit. She and her husband—Richard Satran, an editor at Reuters—have three children.

Rory Satran was born in New York in 1982 and studied Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley. She moved to Paris in 2002, where she became a freelance writer for such publications as The Washington Post and Marie Claire. Since 2006 Satran is the Managing Editor of the fashion and culture biannual magazine Self Service. Her literary work is represented by the Irene Goodman Agency in New York.

Alix Kates Shulman has written four novels, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, Burning Questions, On the Stroll, and In Every Woman’s Life; three memoirs, Drinking the Rain, A Good Enough Daughter, and a still untitled, forthcoming memoir; two books on anarchist Emma Goldman, To the Barricades (a biography) and Red Emma Speaks (acollection); and three books for children, Bosley on the Number Line, Awake and Asleep, and Finders Keepers. Her many stories and essays have appeared in The Nation, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Ms., The Women’s Review of Books, Dissent, Michigan Quarterly Review, Lillith, and The Sun. Her works have been translated into eleven languages.

Catherine Texier is the author of four novels—Victorine, Chloé l’Atlantique, Love Me Tender, and Panic Blood—and a memoir, Breakup. She was the coeditor of the literary magazine Between C & D, is a regular contributor to The New York Times, and has written for Newsday, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and Nerve.com.

S. Kirk Walsh’s essays and articles have been published in The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Rolling Stone, among other national publications. Her poems have appeared in Mid-American Poetry Review and Mirror, Mirror, an anthology. Residencies include the Ragdale Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is working on a novel and lives in Austin, Texas.

Kamy Wicoff is the author of I Do But I Don’t: Why the Way We Marry Matters. She serves on the board of Stanford University’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and on the editorial board of the literary journal Women’s Studies Quarterly. Her work has appeared in Salon.com and has been anthologized in Why I’m Still Married: Women Write Their Hearts Out on Love, Loss, Sex and Who Does the Dishes. Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Kamy and her husband, Andrew, live in New York City with their sons, Maximilian and Jedidiah.